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Sunday, May 21, 2017

Common Diarrhea Meds Can Cause 'Sudden Death' │ Heart Failure Survivors More Likely to Die Than Victims of Many Major Cancers │ Just One Marathon Causes Kidney Damage

With no one else home but me last evening ─ and thus no vehicles in the drive-way ─ I found myself reluctant to get to bed as early as I otherwise would have.

This happened the previous Saturday, and I ended up leaving the kitchen light on to suggest to any passing potential break-and-enterers that someone was home. I didn't want to bother having to do that again.

If I am remembering correctly, it may have been 11:12 p.m. when finally I was in bed. I didn't wear my earplugs, but I don't know if that contributed to my initial block of sleep being so elusive.

I had a most broken night of sleep ─ just blocks of it, and never a great long stretch.

At one point I found myself awake at 2:30 a.m. and considered using the bathroom "just because." But as I lay there in bed, I soon recognized sounds of occupancy in the bathroom; and then my youngest stepson Poté had started showering.

So I used the ensuite shower room in my younger brother Mark's vacant bedroom, happily flushing the toilet with the hope that it had some negative effect on the late showerer. At my return to bed, I then applied my earplugs.

Come morning, I could espy the daylight under my loosened blindfold, so I checked the time ─ something like 6:08 a.m. ─ and got myself up so that I could get to work on the post I started about 10 days ago at my Lawless Spirit website. I really must have it finished tomorrow ─ this is much too long.

Poté was soon enough to get up and no later than 8:14 a.m. had taken off for somewhere, leaving me to wonder if he had to go to work again like he seemed to have to do early yesterday morning.

I thought that my eldest stepson Tho arrived home when I was nearly finished with the work I wanted to put into the post today ─ he had slept elsewhere last night. One of the two boys came home, at any rate.

I had not eaten all of last evening's ground beef supper ─ I had slow-cooked the meat with a huge slice-up leek; so that (along with some raw stalks of kale and collards) comprised my first meal of today.

And then I sought a needed nap ─ it was shortly after 10:00 a.m.

I suppose that I was in bed for over an hour, and dreamed. I must say, having such broken sleep every night also features a wide array of dreams, but I can never remember them.

I opened my bedroom door to see that Mark had come home during my nap and was now shut up in his own bedroom. So I went downstairs to make my day's mug of hot blended instant coffee / cocoa powder.

But soon enough, Mark had come downstairs. He commented on the diluted sunshine outside ─ the sky had been hazed over all morning. And then he said that he had planned on going to "the park" to soak up some of that sunshine. I supposed that he meant Bear Creek Park.

He was wearing a pair of shorts; and then he started packing up four cans of some kind of an alcoholic beverage that had been sitting in the fridge, so it was clear that he still intended to go.

I wished him luck, since the cops do tend to police such venues; and by about 12:18 p.m. he had left. I thought that I was home alone, but then I noticed that Poté was home all this while and sleeping in his bed.

It is my own intention to soon be out in the backyard soaking up some sunshine. But right now, I have an old photo to post that I scanned. The description beneath it is from the Google album where the scan has been saved:

A photo from my mother Irene Dorosh's collection.

I can offer nothing as to location, nor do I have any idea who the subjects are.

As for dating, judging by clothing and car styles, might this be as far back as the decade of the 1970s, if not even the late 1960s?

And now I have just noticed the object at the right border in that photo ─ it is a bus door. Without a doubt, it has to be this bus, the photo of which I had scanned at the same time as that first photo without realizing that the two photos were part of a set:

A photo from my mother Irene Dorosh's collection.

She and her husband Alex sometimes went on bus charters ─ often just to do some gambling in Nevada.

Without my mother or Alex in the shot, it is not possible for me to estimate when the photo was taken, let alone where.

I have now had to amend that bus photo's description in the Google album.

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It has been many years since I was beset with an intestinal bug that cursed me with uncontrollable diarrhea. I had a very bad case of it back in 2003 on my first visit to Thailand.

And come to think of it, I may have had another bout on my third and final visit to that country, which was in 2005. I remember that by the time I was mostly over it, I was visibly shaky. Coping with such a bug for a few days will leave you that way.

Are you aware that the brand Imodium (loperamide) ─ one of the over-the-counter products out there designed to control diarrhea ─ is actually a dangerous opioid? Loperamide isn't only available on the market as Imodium ─ there are generic brand names using the same stuff.

Opioids can kill, as you may realize. And so can this bowel movement inhibitor:

You might note in the first of those two reports that the FDA apparently warned for anyone whose diarrhea was lasting more than two days, he or she should stop using the medication and seek medical attention.

In other words, do not use Imodium or any other loperamide product beyond the recommended dose, and for no longer than two days!

I wonder if it actually says that anywhere on the label?

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The evidence is in that survivors of heart failure are facing a grim future. The prognosis is that living afterwards is less likely than is surviving after contracting various major cancers.

I never ran a marathon. Still, I once did run 10 miles a day for four consecutive days. And it was one of the most boring running experiences of my life, for I was running the distance as laps on a school jogging track.

To break it down, I estimated that it required me to do 40 laps in the outside or longest lane to amass a minimum of 10 miles, but I was once told that 20 laps in that outer lane considerably exceeded five miles.

Whatever the case ─ whether I was running 10 or 12 miles at a time ─ it is just about self-defeating counting off a full 40 laps on each of four consecutive days. The word I would use to describe the experience is 'dreary.'

I got in my 40 minutes of sunshine sitting out in a chair in the backyard, and clad in just rolled-up cargo-style shorts. I started the session at 2:10 p.m.

The sky has remained quite hazed over, but it is still sunny enough to display sharp shadows ─ and burn the unwary.

After the session, I exercised in the tool shed ─ it's getting pretty darned warm to be doing that in the mid-afternoon!

Once I was back in the house, I did the daily stirring of the fermenting purple cabbage and red onions that I have brewing in a fairly large rectangular plastic tub (for want of anything better to do it in). A taste test revealed the liquid to be most tart ─ today is the fifth or sixth day since I started the batch.

I can probably start dishing some out to myself tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on how the last of the batch of fermented green cabbage that my wife Jack previously prepared holds up.

Okay, I am going to close today's post with a journal entry from 41 years ago when I was 26 years old, and living in a basement housekeeping unit in New Westminster. I was renting in a house located on Ninth Street, and about two houses up from Third Avenue.

Fairly recently I had commenced working full-time on a three- or four-month contract with a New Westminster charitable organization called S.A.N.E. (Self Aid Never Ends) that is today known as Fraserside Community Services Society.

I had actually worked for this same organization before ─ for many, many months, in fact; but only on a part-time basis of about a day per week. I had been a swamper on their blue pick-up truck.

Unfortunately, since being re-employed and taken on full-time, I had no such duty. In fact, I had so darned little to do that it was often all I could bear just to endure the boring day.

At least when I was unemployed I was able to exercise throughout the day if I felt like it; and go on extremely long walks.

FRIDAY, May 21, 1976

I came around about 6:30 a.m.

Cathy last night said my last vitamin order had arrived at mom's.

Late in the morning at work Mike said someone on the phone wanted me; it was Gilles. He said he was coming over, intending to try and get on at S.A.N.E. on the incentive.

I then left and opened a $25 account at the Bank of Nova Scotia. However I never did see Gilles by the time of my lunch break.

I heard Safeway was selling chuck steaks, so I blew $4.70 on 2. I'm still going to meet Bill at his work. Beginning this eve, CKLG will all the long-weekend play "happy days" flashback music.

At my return Mike said Gilles & David Prince been there looking for me.

And now my time is finished, and the week-end beckons me seductively! My walk, with the run, was 'neath a hot and cloudless sky, proving the weatherman wrong. I found Bill sunning on the lawn; he'd gotten off at 6:00 p.m., but fortunately I arrived about 6:40 p.m.

We went to his mother's and had a huge glass of milk apiece, then set about our plans.

At Albert's we bought 15 pieces of warm chicken, plus 5 of cold (we got 7 though) for $9. This proved to be very filling, as was 1 of my banana cream pie desserts.

Anyway, I left shortly after 11:00 p.m. for home.

Instead of steak, Bill bought himself a chuck roast (79¢ lb.) at Safeway. I believe we're in for a full day tomorrow.

12:10 a.m.

My main mailing address was my mother Irene Dorosh's home out in Surrey. My younger brother Mark's beautiful girlfriend Catherine Jeanette Gunther had told me the previous evening about the arrival of my mail-order of vitamins. My old friend William Alan Gill and I had been over to visit Jeanette and Mark, but Mark was probably away to work.

I cannot now say that I know who co-worker "Mike" was. I knew Gilles ─ like me, he had previously worked for S.A.N.E. as a part-timer on an employment incentives programme that they had in place with social services, so apparently he was hoping that he might be able to get re-hired.

He was a likable enough young French-Canadain lad, but he could talk just a little too much.

Philip David Prince was an old friend of mine who was also living in a room in New Westminster.

I didn't know that I had ever opened up a bank account at Scotiabank. I only did so at that time because it was the bank that the S.A.N.E. cheques were drawn out from. I had no bank account anywhere else, so it made sense to open an account at the bank where my employer's account was.

My old friend Bill was employed at Royal City Foods, a cannery just on the downriver side of the Pattullo Bridge. Although I had not stated so, I think maybe I worked until 6:00 p.m. Bill had told me that he was supposed to work until 7:00 p.m. that day, so I was going to hustle on over to where he parked his car so that we could hook up and he could take advantage of the inexpensive chuck beef deal I had learned of.

Fortunately for me, even though he had gotten off work at 6:00 p.m. too, he was lolling about on the lawn outside of where he worked, enjoying the day's late sunshine.

His mother Anne Gregory was renting her own suite over in Maillardville. I guess he touched base with her, and then we were free to buy that Albert's fried chicken ─ it was indistinguishable from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

We likely got the extra cold pieces because our order used up the last of the recently cooked pieces they had on hand. And because they had been unable to fill our fresh order, they let us have seven pieces of cold chicken for the price of five.

If we ate 11 pieces of chicken apiece, plus split half a banana cream pie, then we would have been indeed filled.

Bill probably didn't live much more than about four blocks from my room, so walking home later that evening would have been practically nothing.

It almost sounds like I had a life back then!

By the way, 12:10 a.m. was when I went to bed. I only had space enough remaining on the line in my journal to write the time.